Year: 2023

November 8, 2023 Quick space links

2:58 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

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The Democratic Party and its voters endorse bigots and murderers

2:28 pm

Democrats: The party of genocide and bigotry
Democrats: The party of genocide and bigotry

My headline could not be more blunt, but it is also an honest appraisal. Today, when the House of Representatives voted 234-188 to censure congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) for her support for Hamas and her public endorsement of its goal to kill all Israelis, 184 of those nay votes were Democrats. Only 22 were willing to condemn her actions.

What did these Democrats vote against? Here is what the House resolution [pdf] stated Tlaib was guilty of doing:

Whereas Representative Rashida Tlaib, within 24 hours of the October 7 barbaric attack on Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, representing the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, defended the brutal rapes, murders, be-headings, and kidnapping – including of Americans – by Hamas as justified ‘‘resistance’’ to the ‘‘apartheid state’’;

Whereas Representative Tlaib’s October 8 statement claimed that Hamas’ October 7 attack on the Jewish people was partly attributable to United States security aid provided to Israel, which ignores the fact that the Iron Dome, a co-developed air defense system, saved lives that day by intercepting rockets launched from the Gaza Strip against Israeli civilian targets;

Whereas on October 18, 2023, Representative Tlaib continued to knowingly spread the false narrative that Israel intentionally bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17 after United States intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and President Biden assessed with high confidence that Israel did not cause the explosion;
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Strange meandering ridge amidst Martian glaciers

12:21 pm

Overview map

Strange meandering ridge in glacier country

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissence Orbiter (MRO). Its focus is the meandering ridge in the center of the picture, which the scientists intentially describe vaguely as a “ridged flow-like feature”.

The elevation difference between the high and low points within the picture is about 500 feet, though most of that slope occurs in the lighter terrain on the right. The darker area where the ridge is located has no clear elevation trend, though there are hints of depressions and rises within it.

The yellow dot on the overview map above marks this location, deep within the chaos terrain dubbed Deuteronilus Mensae, on the western end of the 2,000 long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country, because practially every image from there shows glacial features.

To underline this fact, the red and white dots mark previous cool images from 2020 and 2021, with the first showing an eroded glacier and the second glacial ice sheets.

The mesa to the east of this picture rises more than 6,000 feet to its peak, as indicated by the black dot. This is also the highest point for this entire grouping of mesas. All are surrounded by a single large apron of material, likely a mixture of alluvial fill and ice.

What however caused the narrow ridge in the picture above? Is it ice or bedrock? If ice why is it so different than the glacial material that seems to surround it? If bedrock, it suggests it is instead an ancient inverted channel created when that ridge was a canyon through which ice or water flowed, compacting the canyon floor. When the terrain around it eroded away it was more resistent and became a ridge instead.

I have no answer. The colors suggest the ridge is rock, not ice, but that is not conclusive.

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FCC raises questions about SpaceX’s application to link cell phones to Starlink

9:20 am

The FCC has responded to SpaceX’s application to link cell phones to Starlink with a set of questions, mostly centered on finding out whether the company’s system might interfere with other communications systems.

“This analysis should take into account the worst case scenario of all satellites transmitting at the same time, including different power levels required for rain fade and cloud cover as well as clear sky conditions over a particular area of coverage,” the FCC wrote.

In addition, the same analysis should look at the “possibility of loss of service by other authorized satellite and terrestrial operators in that area,” the Commission added. Another request asks SpaceX to provide “a map with projected beam coverage” for the US, showing the maximum and typical power levels of the satellite cellular service. The FCC also wants to know how the company can shut down the cellular Starlink system in the event interference arises over certain geographic areas.

The FCC’s concerns appear reasonable, but no one should dismiss the possibility that politics are involved as well. The Biden administration, which now has a majority of appointees on the FCC, has made it clear it opposes almost everything Elon Musk is doing.

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Virgin Galactic trims staff and spending

9:08 am

Despite having completed its fifth commercial suborbital flight on November 2, 2023, Virgin Galactic announced yesterday that it is laying off staff and cutting spending.

The number of people laid off was not revealed. Supposedly the company has done this as part of its effort to develop an upgraded version of SpaceShipTwo.

The company reported having $980 million of cash and equivalents on hand at the end of the second quarter this year, when it reported a net loss of $134.4 million. The company has not disclosed its estimated costs for development of the Delta vehicles, but said it expected those vehicles to enter service in 2026. The company expects only limited revenue from VSS Unity, which is able to fly monthly carrying up to four customers at a time.

I instead suspect that demand for suborbital flights is dwindling because of the competition from orbital operations. Had this company started flying a decade ago, as promised numerous times by Richard Branson, it would have been ahead of the curve. It didn’t and thus missed the boat.

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Bulgaria to sign Artemis Accords

9:01 am

NASA yesterday announced that Bulgaria will sign the Artemis Accords tomorrow, becoming the 32nd nation to join the alliance.

The full list of signatories is as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

The competing alliance of communist nations, led by China, includes only Russia, Venezuala, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and South Africa. That former deep Soviet block nations like Bulgaria and Romania went with the west rather than China illustrates the international distrust of China and its authoritarian methods.

Regardless, we now see a rough outline of the coming cold war in space.

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Lucy: Dinkinesh’s moon is actually a contact binary

8:42 am

Dinkinesh's contact binary moon
Click for original image.

As more images have arrived from Lucy’s fly-by of Dinkinesh scientists have discovered that its moon is actually a contact binary.

The Lucy picture to the right, cropped, reduced and sharpened to post here, shows that contact binary on the right.

This image shows the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. This image was taken at 1 p.m. EDT Nov. 1, 2023, about 6 minutes after closest approach, from a range of approximately 1,010 miles. From this perspective, the satellite is revealed to be a contact binary, the first time a contact binary has been seen orbiting another asteroid.

Data from the fly-by is still being downloaded.

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

8:27 am

SpaceX last night successfully launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

80 SpaceX
50 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China 92 to 50 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 92 to 79. SpaceX by itself once again leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 80 to 79.

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November 7, 2023 Quick space links

2:21 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

1 comment

While 100 universities condemn Hamas, the Ivy League is condemned for looking the other way

1:33 pm

These might be the worst colleges in the country
These are probably the worst colleges in the country

The one good thing that has come from the horrible slaughter of innocents by Hamas on October 7th is that it has made obvious the bankruptcy of America’s so-called elite Ivy League colleges, suggesting without question that if you are either a high school student who wants to get a real education or an employer who wants to hire the best college graduates, these are not the places to find either.

The constrast was made very clear by two letters this week. First, more than one hundred universities nationwide issued a letter harshly condemning Hamas while expressing whole-hearted support for Israel.

We Stand Together With Israel Against Hamas

We are horrified and sickened by the brutality and inhumanity of Hamas. Murdering innocent civilians including babies and children, raping women and taking the elderly as hostages are not the actions of political disagreement but the actions of hate and terrorism. The basis of all universities is a pursuit of truth, and it is times like these that require moral clarity. Like the fight against ISIS, the fight against Hamas is a fight against evil. We, the presidents and chancellors of universities, colleges and higher education associations across the United States of America and the world, stand with Israel, with the Palestinians who suffer under Hamas’ cruel rule in Gaza and with all people of moral conscience. [emphasis in original]

Not surprisingly, none of the Ivy League schools as well as Stanford and the entire California university system signed on. Apparently the torture, rape, and murder of women and children is okay with these “elite” colleges, as long as it is Jewish women and children who are tortured, raped, and murdered.

The second letter directly addressed this lack of moral commitment by these so-called “elite” colleges, and did so by attacking Harvard in particular. On November 4, Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumni, published a 3,000+ word letter directed Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, and the Harvard Corporation Board, strongly condemning Gay’s unwillingness to unequivocally condemn the oppressive culture on Harvard’s campus, as well as its growing anti-Semitism.
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